into the hills after other game to store away for
food during the long winter. The women scraped and cured the skins and
cut up the meat and packed it away as fast as the men could kill the
game and bring it home.

Each day it grew colder, and each night was longer than the last, until
one short September day there came a great snow storm! It snowed all
day long, and that night the wind blew so hard that Koolee and the
twins nearly froze even among the fur covers of their bed, and when
morning came they found themselves nearly buried under a great drift.

That very day Koolee put the stones over the roof of the igloo once
more, and the twins helped her fill in the chinks with moss and earth,
and cover it with a heavy layer of snow, patted down with the snow
shovel, until everything was snug and tight again.

Then they moved in. By the next day all the igloos in the village were
in use, and when night came their windows shone with the light of the
lamps, just as they had so many months before.

Nip and Tup slept outside with Tooky now, in a snow house which Kesshoo
had built for them. Menie and Monnie missed them, but Koolee said, "You
are getting so big now you must begin to do something besides play with
puppies. Monnie must learn to sew, and Menie must help Father with
feeding the dogs and looking after their harnesses, and driving the
sledge."

"Maybe Father will teach you both to carve fine things out of ivory
this winter! Monnie will soon need her own thimble and needles. They
must be made. And she can help me clean the skins and suck out the
blubber, and prepare them for being made into clothes!"

"Dear me! what a lot there is to do to keep clothes on our backs and
food in our mouths! The Giants are always waiting before the igloo and
we must work very hard to keep them outside!"

She did not mean real giants. She meant that Hunger and Want are always
waiting to seize the Eskimo who does not work all the time to supply
food for himself and his family. She meant that Menie must learn to be
a brave strong hunter, afraid of nothing on sea or land, and that
Monnie must learn to do a woman's work well, or else the time would
come when they would be without food or shelter or clothing, and the
fierce cold would soon make an end of them.

It was lucky they got into the warm igloo just when they did, for the
winter had come to stay. The bay froze over far out from shore, and the
white snow covered the igloos so